Finding my rhythm and blues
It would be a great shame if I followed up my first post in 8 months with more silence, so here we go.
What have I done since June?
I taught Number Theory. That was HARD. But fun. And I get to do it again, whee!
I TAed Crypto. That was fun.
I found a new best friend at CTY. Very, very good. It's nice to be friends with someone in the same damn state.
Got stuck with a couple of icky roommates. Come August, I was kinda desperate for a place. Come October, I gave real consideration to moving out. Fortunately, the worse of the two roommates is moving out this weekend, to be replaced by the sister of the nicer one. Oh, stop it with the wink-wink nudge-nudge.
I did my third MIT Mystery Hunt, this time as captain of my own team. This probably warrants a few posts on its own, later. This was somewhat crazy for me, but damn was it fun! We (by which I mean me and my co-captain) plan on running the 2008 Hunt. This requires that we win in 2007. This will take some work.
I did lots of composerly things. A week ago, I gave my thesis concert, though my thesis was not on it. That was really good musically, but stressful. Also a bit disappointing: I had an audience of 12. But I did have a friend come all the way up from NYC just to hear my music. That was definitely good.
Also, this semester, I am TAing Tufts' History of Rock and Roll course. Yeah, me. Go figure. I'm actually not as clueless as I'd think; my parents listened to oldies stations when I grew up, so I know 80-90% of the music we've covered in class so far (up to the Beatles), but I bet the last couple of decades will be a mish-mash to me. But I don't need to worry about any of that; I just need to do the grading for one-third of a 180-student class. Because of snow days and instructor illness, the first essay got backed up, meaning that the first two essays were handed in in quick succession. That means I have 120 essays to grade. They're short things, just a page or two, and if they hand in anything that's vaguely comprehensible they get a 7 out of 10 at least. But...yeah.
Nobody takes History of Rock and Roll all that seriously. It's the course seniors take when they need an easy A and an arts credit for distribution. It stands to reason that these essays are not exactly the paragon of written argumentation. I was surprised that none of them were really, truly horrible -- nothing as bad as some of the gems my friend Andria gets on her students' physics homework. But there were still some interesting lowlights:
* The number one sign that a student has only gone to lectures, and never bothered to open their book: they misspell names. Misspellings like "Tin Pan Ally," "Allen Fried," (for Alan Freed, the disc jockey who coined the term "rock and roll") and "Chuck Barry."
* Nobody can agree how to spell "rock and roll." Is the conjunction "and"? Is it "n"? How many apostrophes does "n" get? Do you capitalize the R's? I can't really complain about these things; everybody has their own way of spelling it, and that's all right. But one guy was so confused by the issue that he used no fewer than 4 spellings in his paper: "Rock 'n Roll," "Rock n' Roll," "Rock 'n' Roll," and "Rock and Roll." Just pick one already!
* Precisely one student used the word "horny". Precisely one student used the phrase "corporate puppets." Many other students managed to express the same sentiments in other ways, though.
* Precisely one student printed her paper on the back of her resume. It was only the second page, though, so all you saw was, "Stage manager for productions of The Who's Tommmy and Chicago/Languages: Basic Spanish and American Sign Language." Do you suppose she prints her resume on the back of her essays, as well?
* About 10% of the students are in dire need of fresh ink or toner cartridges for their printers.
* Precisely one-third of the TAs would be in dire need of a drink after reading all these essays, if he were the sort of person that did that sort of thing.
-Tortoise
What have I done since June?
I taught Number Theory. That was HARD. But fun. And I get to do it again, whee!
I TAed Crypto. That was fun.
I found a new best friend at CTY. Very, very good. It's nice to be friends with someone in the same damn state.
Got stuck with a couple of icky roommates. Come August, I was kinda desperate for a place. Come October, I gave real consideration to moving out. Fortunately, the worse of the two roommates is moving out this weekend, to be replaced by the sister of the nicer one. Oh, stop it with the wink-wink nudge-nudge.
I did my third MIT Mystery Hunt, this time as captain of my own team. This probably warrants a few posts on its own, later. This was somewhat crazy for me, but damn was it fun! We (by which I mean me and my co-captain) plan on running the 2008 Hunt. This requires that we win in 2007. This will take some work.
I did lots of composerly things. A week ago, I gave my thesis concert, though my thesis was not on it. That was really good musically, but stressful. Also a bit disappointing: I had an audience of 12. But I did have a friend come all the way up from NYC just to hear my music. That was definitely good.
Also, this semester, I am TAing Tufts' History of Rock and Roll course. Yeah, me. Go figure. I'm actually not as clueless as I'd think; my parents listened to oldies stations when I grew up, so I know 80-90% of the music we've covered in class so far (up to the Beatles), but I bet the last couple of decades will be a mish-mash to me. But I don't need to worry about any of that; I just need to do the grading for one-third of a 180-student class. Because of snow days and instructor illness, the first essay got backed up, meaning that the first two essays were handed in in quick succession. That means I have 120 essays to grade. They're short things, just a page or two, and if they hand in anything that's vaguely comprehensible they get a 7 out of 10 at least. But...yeah.
Nobody takes History of Rock and Roll all that seriously. It's the course seniors take when they need an easy A and an arts credit for distribution. It stands to reason that these essays are not exactly the paragon of written argumentation. I was surprised that none of them were really, truly horrible -- nothing as bad as some of the gems my friend Andria gets on her students' physics homework. But there were still some interesting lowlights:
* The number one sign that a student has only gone to lectures, and never bothered to open their book: they misspell names. Misspellings like "Tin Pan Ally," "Allen Fried," (for Alan Freed, the disc jockey who coined the term "rock and roll") and "Chuck Barry."
* Nobody can agree how to spell "rock and roll." Is the conjunction "and"? Is it "n"? How many apostrophes does "n" get? Do you capitalize the R's? I can't really complain about these things; everybody has their own way of spelling it, and that's all right. But one guy was so confused by the issue that he used no fewer than 4 spellings in his paper: "Rock 'n Roll," "Rock n' Roll," "Rock 'n' Roll," and "Rock and Roll." Just pick one already!
* Precisely one student used the word "horny". Precisely one student used the phrase "corporate puppets." Many other students managed to express the same sentiments in other ways, though.
* Precisely one student printed her paper on the back of her resume. It was only the second page, though, so all you saw was, "Stage manager for productions of The Who's Tommmy and Chicago/Languages: Basic Spanish and American Sign Language." Do you suppose she prints her resume on the back of her essays, as well?
* About 10% of the students are in dire need of fresh ink or toner cartridges for their printers.
* Precisely one-third of the TAs would be in dire need of a drink after reading all these essays, if he were the sort of person that did that sort of thing.
-Tortoise